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Undergraduate education, along with research and graduate education, is a primary mission of Penn State and the College. In Liberal Arts, our undergraduate education and advising functions are huge operations involving faculty, staff, and advisors in every department. We teach more than 370,000 credit hours a year in nearly 3,000 sections with nearly 500 full-time faculty, nearly 500 teaching assistants, and around 100 part-time faculty. We teach nearly one-third of the undergraduate credit hours on this campus, so the quality of our teaching is crucial to the success of every undergraduate’s education. Moreover, we offer more than forty different major fields, have more than 5,000 undergraduate majors, and graduate more majors than any other college (except, some years, business), so our undergraduate major programs and advising are crucial too. Both the scope of our undergraduate operations and the efforts departments are making to improve the quality of undergraduate education are worth noting. Right now Liberal Arts courses are very popular. In addition to significant
increases in the demand for general education, we’ve had a growing
number of majors. Liberal Arts freshmen and sophomores are advised by professional advisers in the Liberal Arts Undergraduate Studies (LAUS) office in Sparks. These five advisers advise new students (and their parents) in the freshmen testing and counseling program in the summer, orient them to campus in the fall, and then serve as their advisers until the students declare their majors sometime (usually) late in their sophomore year. Last year, the advising office had 9,500 advising contacts (including e-mail) and handled 46,000 in-person or phone inquiries. Once students declare majors, advising responsibilities are handed to the departments where faculty or, in a few cases, professional advisers, assume advising responsibilities. We are working to smooth the transition between our advising here and departmental advising programs. LAUS advisers hold periodic brown bag information lunches with departmental advisors to provide information and to share best practices. Complaints about advising are a perennial feature of the undergraduate landscape, and we know that the quality of advising in departments is uneven, but undergraduate advisers and department heads across the College have continued to work to improve this important area of activity. The environment for advising is different in each department, both in
terms of advising structures and in terms of numbers of majors. The number
of students in our majors ranges from about fifteen to more than eleven-hundred.
Our five largest majors (psychology, crime, law, and justice, political
science, economics, and English) account for one-half of all the majors
in the College. A number of issues are important to discussions of undergraduate education currently. 1. First year seminars: Our seminars have been, on the whole, very well received. Our courses are largely 3-credit hour special topics courses on issues of potential interest to students and faculty (though we also offer a few one-credit hour seminars). Topics this year, for example, range from the civil rights movement to the meaning of human existence, Shakespeare, and the sociology of sport. Each year modifications are made to further improve the program, and it seems to be fulfilling its purpose of providing a high quality course to freshmen while at the same time helping them make the adjustment to college by providing access to a tenure-line faculty member in a small class setting. During the past few years, instructors of these courses have been encouraged to make e-mail contact with students before the semester starts so students will have at least one faculty member they “know” from the earliest weeks. 2. Technology in the classroom has been growing by leaps and bounds. Our instructors lead the University in their use of ANGEL, the on-line course management system that, among other things, allows faculty to easily post material on the Web, create grade books, and monitor chat groups. Students can complete assignments and exams, and communicate easily with faculty. I urge instructors who are not using ANGEL to check it out with colleagues who do use it. Information is also available on the Web at https://cms.psu.edu/frameIndex.htm. The College’s instructional designer is also busy helping instructors in selected large general education classes create on-line courses for delivery here and at the campus colleges. Despite these initiatives, my sense is that we are not responding as well as we could to the desire of many faculty to learn about more effective use of technology. This is an issue that departments, and the College, should pay attention to in the strategic planning process over the next twelve months. 3. Assisting new instructors: Most departments are doing a better job than before in training and mentoring new graduate assistants and new fixed-term and tenure-line faculty. Nonetheless, such training and mentoring is not uniform, and we need to continue our efforts here. 4. Internationalizaton of the student experience: Penn State has long provided a wide range of study abroad opportunities for students, and along with the Smeal College of Business, Liberal Arts students constitute the largest percentage of students who study abroad each year. Nevertheless, participation by Penn State students, in general, and Liberal Arts students, in particular, remains very low compared to many of our peer universities. Consider that only approximately 6 percent of students who graduate with a Liberal Arts degree have studied abroad. When you subtract the foreign language majors, whose participation rate ranges from 20 percent to 47 percent, the picture becomes even more disappointing. No one challenges the benefits that students gain from living and studying in another culture in an age of increasing globalization, yet up to now very little attention has been paid in Liberal Arts to developing a strategy to increase those numbers. Consequently, the Undergraduate Studies Committee will work on providing guidelines for liberal arts departments to provide their majors with clear cut guidelines that students can follow to integrate seamlessly a study abroad experience into their majors. I urge departments to cooperate with this initiative. These are just a few of the issues confronting us as we seek to meet the challenge of providing a high quality education to over 125,000 students who enroll in our classes each year. The strategic planning process offers opportunities to address these and other issues, and I look forward to working with our departments on these matters. Susan Welch This year the College welcomes thirty-two new tenure and tenure-line faculty colleagues. Last month we profiled fifteen of them and this month we profile the remaining seventeen. These profiles are located on the College Web site at: http://www.la.psu.edu/assocdea/newfaculty/2003-04.htm Melissa Hardy, professor of human development and family studies and sociology, and director of the Gerontology Center, comes to Penn State from Florida State University, where she was Bellamy Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy. Melissa received her Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University, with a minor in economics. She is one of the nation's leading experts on retirement, pensions, and income adequacy in the U.S., and currently serves as a member of the National Research Council's steering committee on Adaptive Aging. She has published extensively in the major journals in sociology and gerontology. Her most recent book is the co-edited volume Handbook Of Data Analysis, published this year by Sage. In addition to her research awards and her administrative work, she is a superb teacher, as demonstrated by the two teaching awards she received at Florida State. Recently she was elected Chair of the Behavioral and Social Sciences Section of the Gerontological Association of America. David Atwill, assistant professor of history and religious studies, received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Hawaii at Manoa after previous service at the University of Colorado at Denver and Juniata College. He is a specialist in the history of modern China with a special area of interest in the Muslim minority in southwestern China. He has been a visiting scholar at the Center of Islamic and Central Asian Studies of the Humboldt University, Berlin, and at Yunnan University, China, and the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. He is the author of numerous reviews and articles on this topic and is completing a book, The Chinese Sultanate: Islam, Violence, and the Panthay Rebellion, 1856-1873. Hester Blum, assistant professor of English, holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania. Hester was formerly an assistant professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her studies center on nineteenth-century American literature and culture, with a special emphasis on ante-bellum American sea narratives and their relation to material aspects of life and labor at sea. She is working on a book project, The View from the Masthead: Antebellum American Sea Narratives and the Maritime Imagination. Forrest Briscoe, assistant professor of labor studies and industrial relations and sociology, received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003. Forrest’s research focuses on professional careers, organizations, and labor markets. His dissertation documented the unanticipated role of large medical organizations in providing career options to contemporary physicians. Forrest has also written articles on the revised employment relationship and corporate benefit policies. Séan Erwin, assistant professor of philosophy, received his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Séan was an assistant professor at Saint Louis University. His areas of specialization are modern philosophy and medieval philosophy. His areas of concentration are early modern and contemporary political philosophy, ancient philosophy, and applied ethics. Catherine Kemp, assistant professor of philosophy, received her Ph.D. from SUNY Stony Brook and her J.D. from the University of Texas. She was an assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of Colorado at Denver before joining Penn State. Cathy specializes in the philosophy of David Hume, eighteenth-century British philosophy, the philosophy of law, and common law theory. Lovalerie King, assistant professor of English, holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lovalerie was formerly an assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her studies center on African-American literary traditions from the eighteenth-century to the present. She is at work on a study of “the racialization of theft” in American fiction and has contributed to The Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel. Shu Kuge, assistant professor of comparative literature and Japanese, holds a Ph.D.(2003) in Japanese literature from Stanford, with a minor in comparative literature. His research interests include the intersections of writing, the arts, and technology in modern Japanese literature, from the late nineteenth- through the twentieth-century. At Stanford and at Santa Barbara City College he has taught film, Japanese language, and Japanese culture. Shu is working on a book called The Depth of the Surface, on Ichikawa Kon's films and the literary texts that inspired them. Jennifer Mittelstadt, assistant professor of history and women's studies, received her Ph.D. in modern U.S. history from the University of Michigan. Her dissertation “The Dilemmas of the Liberal Welfare State, 1945-1964: Gender, Race, and Aid to Dependent Children” won the University of Michigan's 2000 Joseph Evans Prize for the writing of an outstanding doctoral dissertation. She is the author of several articles on the problems of poverty and the status of women in post-1945 America. Jennifer's teaching interests focus on modern U.S. public welfare policy, the nature of the liberal state, and issues of race and gender and women's and children's status in modern U.S. society. Gonzalo Rubio, assistant professor of classics and ancient Mediterranean studies and history and religious studies, holds a Ph.D. (1999) from The Johns Hopkins University, and two licenciaturas from the Universidad Complutense (Madrid). Until this Spring, he was an assistant professor at Ohio State. As an assyriologist, his work and publications focus on the languages and literatures of Ancient Mesopotamia (Sumerian and Akkadian), as well as other cultural and historical aspects of the Ancient Near East. Gonzalo is currently finishing an edition of early Sumerian literary texts and another book on Sumerian grammar. Ryan Stark, assistant professor of English, holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Texas Christian University. Ryan formerly taught at the University of Southern California. His dissertation, “Plain and Occult Styles in Seventeenth-Century British Writing,” studies the impact of mysticism on scientific discourse in the early modern period. Steve Thorne, (Ph.D., UC Berkeley) is the associate director of the Center for Language Acquisition, the associate director of the Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research (CALPER), and assistant professor of applied linguistics. He publishes in the areas of applied linguistics and sociocultural theory, presents annually at a wide array of professional conferences, offers workshops and seminars on language learning and technology both in the U.S. and abroad. In the past he has taught Hindi and Urdu and has been a foreign language teacher trainer. Currently, Steve is the co-principal investigator on a three-year grant examining intercultural communication and foreign language development and is co-authoring (with James P. Lantolf) a book on additional language learning and activity theory. Maria Truglio, assistant professor of Italian, received her Ph.D. in Italian Literature from Yale University in 2001. For the past two years she has been teaching courses on modern Italian and Italian-American literature and culture at Penn State. Her research focuses on poetry of the late Romantic period as well as children's literature of the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries. Her current projects include a psychoanalytic study of Giovanni Pascoli's poetry and an article on Carlo Collodi's “Pinocchio.” Cassandra Veney, assistant professor of African and African American studies and women’s studies, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. Prior to coming to Penn State, Cassandra was an associate professor in the Department of Politics and Government at Illinois State University and the Director of the African Studies Unit. Cassandra's research includes the African diaspora, refugee women, and human rights. Daniel Weiss, assistant professor of psychology, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2000, and recently completed a postdoctoral traineeship at the University of Rochester. His interest is in the cognitive mechanisms underlying language acquisition. This work focuses on statistical learning mechanisms that have been implicated in the learning of phonetic categories, as well as word segmentation and rule-learning. Daniel uses a comparative approach in order to determine whether these abilities are unique to humans. His research compares the abilities of infant and adult humans with the abilities of non-human primates. In addition, he is interested in animal communication, particularly vocal learning and recognition. Daniel has recently published articles in Cognition and the Journal of Comparative Psychology. Aaronette M. White, assistant professor of African and African American studies and women's studies, holds a Ph.D. in psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. Aaronette has had postdoctoral fellowships from Harvard University in the Radcliffe Bunting Program, the Du Bois Institute for Afro-American research, and the Women and Public Policy/International Security Programs. Her research topics include political psychology and correlates of black feminist collective action. Currently, she is completing a manuscript on the life experiences of African American men who are feminist activists and the public policy implications of their activism. She teaches global black feminisms and black sexuality. Kellie Butler, instructor in political science, will receive her Ph.D. from Rice University later this semester. Kellie’s expertise is American government, but more specifically state politics, judicial behavior, and agenda-setting with a focus on civil rights. Kellie's publications have already appeared in top political science journals such as the American Journal of Political Science. Faculty Grants and Awards Richard Felson, professor of crime, law, and justice and sociology, from the U.S. Department of Justice for “Police Notification for Assault and Sexual Assault.” Fulbright Senior Scholar Awards We're delighted to report that five Liberal Arts faculty members won Fulbright grants for study abroad. David Baker, professor of education and sociology, Education Policy Studies, Germany; Bernard Bell, professor of English, People's Republic of China; Jeffrey Cohen, assistant professor of anthropology, Mexico; Robert Harkavy, professor of political science, Germany; Edward Keynes, professor emeritus of political science, Japan; and Lisa Reed, associate professor of French and linguistics, France. Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Awards (SIOP) Kevin Murphy, professor and head of psychology, has been selected as the recipient of the 2004 SIOP Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. John Hausknecht, psychology graduate student, was selected as one of the two recipients of the 2004 S. Rains Wallace Dissertation Reward Award for his dissertation “Applicant Reactions to Selection Procedures: Narrative Review and Meta-Analysis.” International Education of Students Award (IES) Alexander Wiker, East Asian Studies major, has been awarded an IES Merit-Based Scholarship. He will study in Beijing for the fall semester. Back to TopLiberal Arts Programs Win Mid-Atlantic Region University Continuing Education Awards Congratulations to three Liberal Arts continuing education programs that won three awards of excellence from the University Continuing Education Association of continuing education programs. Award winners were: Education Programs for Separated and Divorcing Parents (non-credit, offered by the Justice and Safety Institute) The Summer Institute for Applied Linguistics (offered by the Center for Language Acquisition) Deputy Sheriff Basic Training (non-credit, offered by the Justice and Safety Institute) Comparative Literature Luncheon The Comparative Literature Luncheon is a weekly informal lunchtime gathering of students, faculty, and other members of the University community. Each week there is a short (twenty-minute) presentation, by a visitor or a local speaker, on a topic related to a humanities discipline. Daniel Walden (dxw8@psu.edu) is the coordinator for the series this semester. We meet every Monday in 102 Kern at about 12:15 p.m. Coffee and tea are provided (no charge). You can bring your lunch or buy something on a tray in Kern Cafeteria (next door) and bring it into 102. The speaker will begin at about 12:40 p.m. Allowing a few minutes for discussion, we'll conclude in time for you to get to classes that meet at 1:25 p.m. All students, faculty, colleagues, and friends are welcome. For details; check the WebEvents Calendar. Family scholars from across the nation will converge on Penn State October 9-10 for the Penn State Annual National Family Symposium to examine the reasons for depressed fertility and the factors people consider when deciding whether or not to have children and when to have them. The symposium will be held at the Nittany Lion Inn and is titled Creating the Next Generation: Social, Economic, and Psychological Processes Underlying Fertility in Developed Countries. The symposium is organized by Alan Booth, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Human Development, and Demography, and Ann Crouter, professor of human development, of Penn State. For more information and registration materials, visit http://www.pop.psu.edu/events/symposium/, or contact Ann Morris, Phone (814) 863-6607; Fax (814) 863-8342; e-mail: amorris@pop.psu.edu. “Recent Films from France” is the focus of a free, year-long series of six films presented by the French Department. All films are 35 mm, subtitled in English, and are free to the public. En Attendant le Bonheur (Waiting for Happiness) by Abderrahmane Sissako, Thursday, October 16, will be shown at 6:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.; and Laissez-Passer (Safe Conduct) by Bertrand Tavernier, Thursday, November 13, will be shown at 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. both in 113 Carnegie Building. TREMIN Research Program Conference The TREMIN Research Program on Women’s Health will host “A TREMIN Conference: TREMIN’s Contributions to Menstrual Cycle Research Over 70 Years” on October 17 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m at the Living Center (Room 110) in Henderson Building. Presenters are drawn from nationwide menstrual cycle experts. The conference is co-sponsored by the Kimberly-Clark Corporation, the College of the Liberal Arts, and the Population Research Institute. There is no charge to attend. For more information contact Phyllis Mansfield at 814-863-0356 or by e-mail at pkm@psu.edu or phone the TREMIN office at 814-863-9570. More information about the TREMIN Research Program on Women’s Health is available on the Web at: http://www.pop.psu.edu/tremin/ . On Saturday, October 18, 2003, the Penn State Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures will host its second annual Pennsylvania German Day. The purpose of this event is to explore, showcase, and celebrate the German heritage in Pennsylvania with lectures, field trips, and banquets. Alumni, faculty, friends, students, and teachers are invited to attend. This year’s events will take place in Eisenhower Chapel. They are centered around the topic of Amish and Mennonite music and the writer, educator, and musician Joseph Yoder, the author of the novel Rosanna of the Amish. The program will feature Julia Kasdorf, associate professor of English, whose prize-winning volume of poetry, Sleeping Preacher, looks at her Amish and Mennonite roots in Big Valley. She is the author of a recent biography of Yoder. Also speaking will be Hedwig Durnbaugh, a well-known expert in German hymnody. The Big Valley Singers led by Percy Yoder, one of Joseph Yoder’s music students, will perform music arranged by Joseph Yoder. For program events please see http://german.la.psu.edu/pagermanday.htm or the WebEvents Calendar at http://www.events.psu.edu. Richard B. Lippin Lectureship in Ethics “Witnessing Ethics” is the topic of the 2003 Richard B. Lippin Lectureship in Ethics to be presented by Kelly Oliver, professor of philosophy and women’s studies, Stony Brook University, on October 31 at 4:00 p.m. at the Nittany Lion Inn, Boardroom 1. Kelly challenges the fundamental tenet of the current debate over multiculturalism, namely, that various social movements concerning, for example, race, gender, genocide, are struggles for recognition. It will be argued that victims of oppression, slavery, and torture not only seek recognition but also witness to horrors that cannot be seen. Kelly specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Continental philosophy and feminist theory, has lectured widely both nationally and internationally, and is Co-Director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Among her many book publications are The Colonization of Psychic Space; Noir Anxiety: Race, Sex, and Maternity in Film Noir; Witnessing: Beyond Recognition, and Family Values: Subjects between Nature and Culture. Her work has been translated into Norwegian, Korean, and German. Sponsored by the Richard B. Lippin Fund in conjunction with the Department of Philosophy and the Rock Ethics Institute. Undergraduate Studies Advising Brown Bag Program LAUS is continuing the brown bag programs on advising this semester. Our next meeting will take place on October 15, in 124 Sparks Building at 12:00 p.m. The topic will be concurrent majors. We will discuss the new policies and procedures for students pursuing more than one major, both within the College or combining a Liberal Arts major with one in another college. Please RSVP to your department's LAUS liaison at least one week in advance. All who advise students are welcome. Three members of our faculty and staff serve as College sexual harassment resource officers. These individuals may be contacted for confidential advice on matters relating to sexual harassment: Mel Mark, professor of psychology, 863-1755; Jennifer Morris, director of administrative services, 863-8426; and Deborah Clarke, associate professor of English and women's studies, 863-9592. Alternatively, the University Affirmative Action Office (863-0471) may be contacted directly. The WebEvents Calendar features, lectures, talks, and conferences between October 1 and November 14. Both faculty and staff members of the College of the Liberal Arts have a history of generous contribution to the annual United Way campaign at the individual level. Help us increase participation in the College-level events and our overall donation total by marking your calendars for the following activities. Friday, October 17, noon–Pizza, soda and candy sale–Willard Building lobby. Monday, October 20 through Thursday, November 6–On-line Auction, Web site to be announced later. We need your donations or ideas for items to auction at this annual event. If you have an idea, or would like to donate an item, please contact Lois Seitz at lseitz@psu.edu, by phone at 865-8926, or in 13 Sparks Building. Friday, October 31, noon–Pizza, soda and candy sale–Sparks Building lobby Late October–University-wide distribution of fund-raising materials through payroll deduction and/or one-time contribution Outlet Shopping Trip–day trip to the Grove City Outlets just in time for holiday shopping; date and cost to be announced Staff Awards and Mentoring Award The College is soliciting nominations for outstanding staff awards and the mentoring award. The application deadline is Friday, November 14. We encourage all of our administrators, faculty, and staff to reflect on the good work of our staff, and to consider nominating an outstanding staff member for recognition. Selection is based on exceptional job performance that best typifies professionalism and dedication to the mission of the College and University. Nominees for staff awards should excel in such aspects as initiative, teamwork, judgment and problem solving, work quality, and service to faculty, staff, students, and other constituencies. The mentoring award is meant to recognize staff members who have been a positive role model or mentor for other staff members. Nominees for the award should have an outstanding record of such mentoring instruction or coaching, listening, motivating, and encouraging other staff members. Should you wish to nominate a staff member for one of the awards, please contact your department head or administrative assistant. Nomination materials are to be sent to them by Friday, October 10. The nomination materials are also available at the College’s human resources Web site (http://www.la.psu.edu/assocdea/hr.htm). Nominations should be sent to Jennifer Morris in 106 Sparks. Applicants will be selected in December. Staff and Children of Staff Program Support Fund Thanks to individual donations and hard work of the College of the Liberal Arts staff, the endowment principal balance of this fund is $17,527, which includes $5,369 in matching funds provided by the College. We have more than $900 available to award this academic year. The 2002-03 staff recipients were Sally Arnold, linguistics and applied language studies and Christi Daniels, English. Tara Gardner and Gregory Shoemaker were the recipients from the children of staff portion. Applications for both parts are available on the Liberal Arts’ Human Resources Web page and are due December 19. Completed applications for the staff portion of the endowment are to be returned to Betsy Will, 105 Sparks Building. Staff members may apply for assistance for HRDC courses, seminars or conferences, or Penn State credit courses. For Penn State credit courses, awardees will be reimbursed after successful completion of the course with a grade of B or better. Dean Welch will name a committee to select recipients, and the committee will make its selections in early January. Applications for the Children of Staff portion must be returned to 13 Sparks Building, to the attention of “LA Scholarships.” Children of staff members should be enrolled as an undergraduate at any Penn State location and in any major. The Liberal Arts Scholarship Committee will select these recipients. For more information, please contact Marilyn Byers at (Mbyers@psu.edu) or 863-1827. An informational session is being offered for College staff on Thursday, October 16, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. in room 121 Sparks Building. Dean Welch will discuss College initiatives and directions, and Jennifer Morris will speak about human resources programs and initiatives. All staff members are invited to attend this informational program. Amy Barone, staff assistant V, English Dawn Corman, staff assistant VI, psychology Shelley Davenport, staff assistant V, French and Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese Sarah Derber, staff assistant VI, undergraduate studies Barbara Edwards, staff assistant V, philosophy, Rock Ethics Institute Kristy Finlon, research technician, psychology Sharon Melzer, project associate (financial resource analyst), sociology, PA Commission on Sentencing Anna Marie Nachman, research technologist, psychology Marie Reese, staff assistant VII, political science Joelle Sherlock, academic counselor, psychology Mary Ann Stauffer, staff assistant V, African and African American Studies, labor studies and industrial relations, and women’s studies Lisa Stock, administrative assistant II, undergraduate studies Rachel Wannarka, research technologist, psychology Lisa Knudson, research coordinator, psychology Jennifer Morris, director of administrative services, dean’s office Carol Toscano, staff assistant VIII, French and Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese Tracie Bogus, staff assistant V, sociology and crime, law, and justice Alaina Breitberg, research technologist, psychology Nicole Duffala, staff assistant V, economics Peg Ebeling, staff assistant VI, undergraduate studies Diane Jones, academic counselor, psychology Janet Klinefelter, college advancement assistant, alumni relations and development Patricia Martin, staff assistant VI, political science Shaun McMurtrie, staff assistant VII, undergraduate studies Victoria Peurifoy, staff assistant V, undergraduate studies Jason Phenicie, staff assistant V, African and African American Studies, labor studies and industrial relations, and women’s studies Susan Ruth, research support assistant, psychology LA Times is compiled by Louise Sharrar, Dean’s Office, 110 Sparks, 865-7691, lsharrar@psu.edu LA Times is also available on the Web at: http://www.la.psu.edu/ This publication is available in alternative media on request. Penn State encourages persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you anticipate needing any type of accommodation or have questions about the physical access provided, please consult Louise Sharrar 814-865-7691 in advance of your participation or visit. The Pennsylvania State University is committed to the policy that all persons shall have equal access to programs, facilities, admission, and employment without regard to personal characteristics not related to ability, performance, or qualifications as determined by University policy or by state or federal authorities. It is the policy of the University to maintain an academic and work environment free of discrimination, including harassment. The Pennsylvania State University prohibits discrimination and harassment against any person because of age, ancestry, color, disability or handicap, national origin, race, religious creed, sex, sexual orientation, or veteran status. Discrimination or harassment against faculty, staff, or students will not be tolerated at The Pennsylvania State University. Direct all inquiries regarding the nondiscrimination policy to the Affirmative Action Director, The Pennsylvania State University, 328 Boucke Building, University Park, PA 16802-5901; Tel 814-865-4700/V, 814-863-1150/TTY U. Ed. LBA 04-83 |
This fall, Liberal Arts welcomed more than 650 new
freshmen, the largest group in many years; last academic year, we graduated
more than 1550 seniors. Part of this huge gap between the students we
admit and those we graduate is a consequence of the 500 or so majors who
transfer to Liberal Arts at University Park each year from the campus
colleges. We also enroll more transfer students from other universities
than any of our sister colleges. A final part of the gap is because many
of our majors are so-called “discovery” majors. While a lot
of new freshman think they will study psychology or engineering or business,
few have ever thought of labor studies or comparative literature or communication
arts and sciences or sociology, for example. They learn about these majors,
and many others, through their general education experiences, and then
transfer to Liberal Arts from another college in the university. 
Most majors have grown in size during the past few years, and several
have grown dramatically.
In some cases, this has been a consequence of an overhaul of an outdated
curriculum and a renewed attention to undergraduates.